White Chocolate Bread Pudding Made with Tea Infused Cream

A month or so ago I received a high tea cookbook from the PR company for Dilmah Tea. Along with the book came an invitation to submit a recipe for their contest. The contest is for recipes where Dilmah tea is used in some way, either a recipe or a pairing.

I flipped through the book and everything looked so beautiful and there were exquisite dishes incorporating tea leaves, tea or infusions. Nothing popped into my head until I made a loaf of brioche bread last week.

A year or so ago I was at the weekly cooking class that I go to in order to chat with other food loving women (usually all women) every Friday morning and one day my friend Iris who teaches the classes did a white chocolate bread pudding with raspberries. I wondered, could I infuse tea in the cream before making the custard?

Well, the answer is yes. Yes, indeed you can.

Dilmah has a rose petal and vanilla tea that has the most beautiful aroma I’ve smelled. I was almost like Pepe LePew following a scent. I knew from the first whiff that I was going to give it a try.

I heated the cream to just under boiling 90C (194F) and popped two tea bags in the cream and set it aside to cool. When it was at room temperature I squeezed out the tea bags and used the cream as you’d normally do when making custard.

Can I say again, how wonderful this smelled? Still, smelling and tasting were two different things and it needed to “taste” tea in order for it to be considered by the contest.

After slicing and buttering the brioche and placing it in a buttered pan, I poured over the white chocolate custard and tumbled in some frozen raspberries. I figured raspberries being red might go well with the rose petal theme. Plus, I love raspberries.

As I slid it into the oven and poured water halfway up the side of the dish I thought, “Please work.” I did this because I had NO plan B for my entry.

50 minutes later I checked the oven and it was nearly done – and lightly golden brown when I took it out of the oven. When it had cooled, I took a photo of it and then plated and photographed a dish of it. THEN I called John down and said, “Take a bite and tell me what you taste?”

“Hmmm, vanilla and something else – sort of rosy,” he said.

I kissed him and said he was really good! Then I explained why I asked. At first I didn’t notice but he kept eating as we were talking. John usually doesn’t like desserts and he has always said he hated bread pudding, so why was he still eating?

“This is really good, Maureen. I don’t like bread pudding and I can’t put it down.”

Comments

Maureen, I’m glad someone else talks to their food 🙂 This looks amazing and I love the idea of infusing the cream with delicious tea flavor. I would say the old saying “the proof is in the pudding” was verified by your taste-testing hubby! I declare you the winner in advance! 🙂

Now that is very clever Maureen, and quite beautiful too; I wish you the best of luck in the contest (not that you need it!). I can certainly see how tea can be an incredible flavour in a recipe, I may have to try it with chai tea and panettone. My MIL adored bread pudding!

This bread pudding looks wonderful, Maureen. I love infusions in cream or milk for puddings, ice creams, pastry creams custards etc, and I think your infusion of the rose vanilla tea along with with the white chocolate, is brilliant. It looks beautiful too!

Definitely sounds like a winner! I’ve not done much with tea infusions, but I really like the idea (and we drink tea every morning, so we have plenty available). This looks excellent. Plus it’s a good story. Thanks.

Maureen, I gasped at this bread pudding. So inviting! Believe it or not but I am awful at making one, I confess! 🙂 Oh how I wish to have a slice of yours w/tea now. BTW a touch of brilliance there with the tea infused…:)

I was too until I realized I wasn’t letting it sit long enough before baking. My first ones were pretty crap. John wouldn’t eat it. LOL This time I used less bread, more custard and let it sit 20 minutes before baking.

I don’t have bread pudding often. But when I do, I always enjoy and savor the experience. I love your use of tea. I’m sure the subtle taste of tea is wonderful in this bread pudding. This looks absolutely delicious. 🙂

Maureen, I was also trying to think of various ways to use tea in recipes. I remember seeing recipes for ‘tea-smoked’ fish or meat- using smoked tea leaves. This might give the food an unusual taste. I like the look of your new yellow teapot in the background!

Oh our poor husbands. For us it’s not the ‘does my butt look big in this?’ it’s ‘what does this taste/look like.’ They take a look/bite and answer with baited breath.
I would have given this one a thumbs up too!

It’s thickened cream. It’s just plain ordinary cream but it’s really thick and we can buy it in the grocery stores here. Since John was going to be my tester I used that because he loves cream. He’d have cream with cream if he could. 🙂

I have a strange love/hate relationship with bread pudding. I tell myself I don’t care that much for it, then I find myself looking up recipes for it and making it, then scarfing it down. It’s like the bad boy I want to leave but can’t. I think that you have added another bread pudding to my list of ones to make. White chocolate and tea? Yep. I’m there.

This does look like a fantastic dessert and especially good for this cooler weather. I hope you do submit the recipe and I’ll look forward to hearing how you get on. John did very well with this dessert – he made all the right noises! xx

What a great idea Maureen!! Like John, I don’t usually like bread pudding either, but this I’ll have to try. Only now I need to find that tea. I’ll check out Harney’s here to see if they have something similar.

Wow, so creative, infusing tea in the cream, I only can imagine how tasty and flavorful this bread pudding is…like that you have raspberry in it. Looks awesome.
Thanks for the recipe Maureen and have a lovely week 🙂

I have been waiting for this post ever since I saw the picture! 😉 I have never made bread pudding but now think I need to bump bread pudding up on my baking list. I’m a tea drinker, so the tea infused cream sounds divine!

Tea infused creams in desserts are fabulous- Glad you gave it a try.
When I was in culinary school , we had to create a “high concept” dessert menu, for which I made a Jasmine tea infused creme brulé that I loved. Hmmm.. now that I’m thinking of it, I’ll have to revisit that one sometime soon.

Oh my goodness this looks good! I love the idea of the tea infused cream. I bet the rose scent of the tea really makes this bread pudding something special! Your pictures show what a lovely dish this is.